Recording - December 2011 - 24

Meet the Electrons
STEVE FERRONE [composer, producer, drummer and percussionist]: Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Duran Duran, Aretha Franklin, Bee Gees, Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, B52’s and Average White Band are just some of the names on an endless list of musicians Ferrone has played with. Currently a member of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, he remains one of the most in-demand, and talented, studio drummers in the world today. WARREN CUCCURULLO [composer, songwriter, guitarist, producer and multi-instrumentalist]: Having first joined Frank Zappa’s band at age 21, Cuccurullo is a musical prodigy. He is a founding member of the New Wave group Missing Persons, having written such classics as “Destination Unknown,” “Walking In L.A,” and “Words.” Warren was also a member of Duran Duran for 15 years, performing and writing on several albums, and co-writing such hits as “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone.” www.cuccurullo.tv ANTHONY J. RESTA [composer, producer, songwriter, mixer, and multi-instrumentalist]: Situated in his Studio Bopnique Musique “musical laboratory”, Resta is well-known for his outstanding ability in the art of producing and songwriting. Having worked magic with artists such as Collective Soul, Elton John, Duran Duran, Blondie, Sarah McLachlin, Guster, Megadeth, Extreme, and more, he is always cultivating both fresh talent and breathing new life into established acts. www.anthonyjresta.com ROGER O’DONNELL [composer, producer, synthesist]: Having been born into a musical family, and best known for his standout contributions to legendary group The Cure, O’Donnell’s unparalleled approach to Electronic composition and collaboration with artists such as David Hockney to The Psychedelic Furs has yielded an incredibly diverse and unique body of work. O’Donnell has managed to carve out a niche for himself within the Electronic and Classical genres, not only making waves at U.S. college radio, but also resulting in live orchestral performances of his work. www.rogerodonnell.com ERIC ALEXANDRAKIS [composer, vocalist, producer and multi-instrumentalist]: Classically trained since the age of 6, and discovered by Duran Duran’s John Taylor, Alexandrakis is a successful composer whose original songs have been actively licensed to all forms of media. A pioneer in digital copyright protection [Alexandrakis produced the first digitally watermarked CD while in graduate school (technology developed by bluespike.com)], he is also an acclaimed Indie artist, entering the top 40 radio charts in the Adult Contemporary genre several times in his career. www.ericalexandrakis.com

Anthony J. Resta (with Karyadi Sutedja): After receiving the files from Steve’s LA drum-tracking session via Dropbox (www.dropbox.com), we began listening to the various takes. Steve is a monster feel player and there was so much great material it wasn’t difficult to choose some of our fav parts to comp a killer drum track. We used entire verses and choruses and did very little editing on the parts. Steve’s pocket is insanely deep and where he puts the backbeat just doesn’t get any greasier. This is where I began shutting off about 90 percent of the MPC and Reason rhythm programming I had done in preproduction. The drums were tracked beautifully and we really liked the in-your-face vibe they had. We added no artificial reverb. Karyadi did some subtle eq and compression and sent them to a pair of channels in our Dangerous summing mixer. They were just too cool to muck up with a lot of electronica-type rhythm programming, so I stuck to more ambient and filtered elements that left the drums in their own uncluttered sonic space. Roger had done some brilliant rhythm programming along with his synthesizer tracks in the files he sent, and some of those became the crazy stutter firecracker-like drums of the intro. More on that later. At this point I began choosing the various sounds Warren had tracked for the main guitar riff. This classic angular Warren riff was the foundation for the verses and I wanted it to vary its tonal character from section to section and to build it up throughout the song. I started with the verse sound and reamped a clean signal version through a Radial X-Amp re-amp box and ran it through a Matchless amp and a Roger Linn Design AdrenaLinn for the first verse sound. The rest of the sounds were pretty much as Warren had recorded them with just a little eq and extra delay; Karyadi likes the Filterbank and Renaissance plugs for a lot of what he does in the box, but we also use outboard eqs like the Millennia and Focusrite ISA110 as well as Neve 1073 and 1066 modules. Roger’s and Eric’s synths were wonderful and evolving and really made the chorus and bridge lift, everyone somehow did their own beautiful reharmonization of the original chords that really lifted everything up and out of the verses. All the sounds these gentlemen make are so instantly “them” it’s just a matter of finding the optimum way to weave the audio quilt that becomes Electrons. This is the intangible part of the work. I wanted to use a lot less lyrics in our version to create more space, so we extended the length of the verses. I began choosing lines of Christa’s vocals and used them like puzzle pieces to put an entirely new order to the lyrics and melody and developed it in a new way to match our music. As far as vocal processing goes, I used the dry tracks and ran them through various combos of SoundToys plug-ins and [Native Instruments] Guitar Rig 2. I kept all these processed vocals 100 percent wet to avoid flanging with the original dry vocal. You can create some really crazy signal paths in Guitar Rig 2 with reverse delays and pitch shifting and LFOs
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RECORDING DECEMBER 2011

http://www.dropbox.com http://www.cuccurullo.tv http://www.anthonyjresta.com http://www.rogerodonnell.com http://www.bluespike.com http://www.ericalexandrakis.com

Recording - December 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2011